Prowling around the hunting grounds of Southend

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Elections 2016 (1)

I am sure that there will be many blogs on this subject and the first thing I should say is that I am now officially a candidate for St Lukes having got the confirmation through the post today.

I will come back to that later and leaving aside St Lukes, I was thinking of an echo article a week ago which was talking about 3 interesting seats that they thought was important. I must say I found their choices odd and for me (not including st lukes) here are my 3 interesting battles (well 5)

SHOEBURY

With 2 adversaries in Mike Assenheim and Anne Chalk standing, it will be interesting to see what the outcome of this animosity is – will it allow Sue Abrahams to sneak up through the middle? An interesting battle.

MILTON

On paper an easy win for Julian Ware Lane, he is the sitting councillor, and used to be out regularly meeting the residents but recently he seems to have stopped working quite as hard and with the ward voting Conservative last year will it repeat the same this year, certainly my partner has only heard from the Conservative candidate and has only received one letter again from the Conservative candidate.

BLENHEIM PARK

This is one ward where I am torn as to what i think/want to happen. With Graham Longley stepping down, it has opened this one right up. As great a campaigner as Jill Allen King and also Roger Weaver are, I think that this will go down to the Conservative candidate and Matt Dent. Obviously my party loyalties are with the Conservative candidate but my heart wants Matt to win as I have a tremendous amount of respect for him and our views actually are not a million miles apart.

PRITTLEWELL

A ward I know well after helping Meg campaign in the past 2 years. I hope David Garston wins here although i think he has big feet to step into in terms of the personal vote that Meg has! The sitting councillor is of course a cabinet member.

KURSAAL

This might seem a strange choice and if you asked me last year then i would have said Anne Jones would have walked it but I think she will walk Westborough. Because she can’t work with the other Labour councillor she has moved on leaving 2 first time candidates. Normally i would plump for the Labour candidate but i have done a few canvas sessions for Simon Gittus and he is being well received.

As I say some very interesting battles ahead and i suspect the outlook of the council will be very different on May 6th.